yes the punishment will always be there. But do the conditions have to be so bad?
How ever you feel about the incarcerated, whether you are a victim or a family member, or maybe even an acquaintance of one, you want your perpetrator to suffer. I get that. The more pain the better. But since our government doesn’t execute everyone that gets a felony, we need to provide the basics to these men and women so that they can survive.
The Skinny
Reported first by El Camino News, Albuquerque’s underground news, the Metropolitan Detention Center is providing unsanitary conditions for the inmates. From a direct source at MDC, the jail has been on 24hour lock down the last three weeks. The corrections officers walk from COVID Pods to regular Pods without sanitizing and changing their protective gear. In essence, this was why there continues to be an ongoing outbreak. At the beginning of the pandemic the reason there was an epidemic at MDC was due to the corrections officers bringing in COVID from home and not letting anyone know they had tested positive. Many got fired because they did not disclose this info.
Additional dehumanizing conditions include the inmates not having the ability to heat their food to appropriate heating temps because they have no microwaves or anything to heat up with, so everything is below 160 degrees. They are also not allowed to shower. My source tells me that they have not been allowed to shower for over a week. Furthermore, there are no laundry services, so there is no change of clothing.
The author of this spent over a year at MDC. The conditions are horrific. With COVID, the shortage of corrections officers (who wants to be one?), and the social workers not caring anymore, the jail has become a disaster. Ultimately, the counselors and social workers have to report food trays stacked up four feet high full of bugs, you would think they would? They are the ones that took a pledge to help the less fortunate, and by ignoring these things, they are to blame. The water has always been an issue at MDC. It’s a horrible situation because the water uses the same pipes as the sewer, so deadly gases form, and then the inmate is the final target.
To add to these conditions, the correction officers have been accused, rightfully so, of using deadly tactics as a means of force. First, the social worker, nurse or caregiver at the time calls in a “stack team” to brutalize the inmate. Instead of talking and letting the inmate know that it’s going to be ok, the caretaker loses patience and calls in this brutal method of handling an inmate. The inmate then gets maced, hit, poked, and most of the time tased. The inmate is then drug to the showers, where additional violence occurs. Again, this is based on the caretakers recommendation for their lack of patience.
Social work is the science of protecting the less fortunate, the marginalized, and forgotten demographics. Their job is to ensure the inmate is protected from the corrections officers and other inmates. But instead, rumors of workplace romances between social workers and corrections officers have clouded said caretakers jobs. This is too bad because we pay these social workers a lot of money these days to not engage in workplace politics but to do their jobs of helping the inmate succeed.
The problem with these intuitions is that there is zero accountability, what goes inside of MDC and jails around the nation, stays there and nothing ever gets reported. It’s their kingdom. This is sad because the correction officers have all the power, and not only are they not educated in these matters, they care more about looking good and being the kings of the jail. But, of course, when said corrections officer leaves the jail, they are normal humans that are unfortunately targeted everywhere they go. It’s that catch-22.
This has been a great debate about who gets treated with respect and who doesn’t. It’s widely known that the corrections officers at MDC hate sex offenders. The guards would take the sex offenders into the showers and beat them when I was there. Why the showers? Because there are no cameras because of privacy issues. I had to clean those showers and pick up debris from the inmate being maced, tased, or beaten. Corrections officers have too much power; they don’t know how to balance the power of their inner demons and what’s right.
MDC continues to disappoint, starting from the top to the rookie corrections officer. And who suffers at the end? The social workers and corrections officers get to go home, even together if they want. The inmates stays and the punishment continues.
More updates coming tomorrow. If of course I’m not censored by MDC or the state.
